Graduation

Ok, I haven't updated this thing in a while but it's not like anyone reads this anyway. On June 16th, I had my high school graduation. The students had to come in at 8 am to practice walking so we don't screw up in front of thousands of people. After two tries, we finally figured it out and the administrators were satisfied that the class of 2006 will look decent.
After practice, I didn't want to spend gas and money to drive home and I didn't really have anything to do, so Lars and I went up to his house up in the mountains to try to find a deer that was eating his vineyard. We decided that there's no other choice but to kill it, so I armed myself with a baseball ball, Lars got a giant wrench and a bow and arrows. We spent a good hour looking for the stupid animal, but it was nowhere to be found. Deer hunting, or more like deer looking, was good exercise and a good waste of time.
So after changing into graduation clothes, we drove back down to Los Gatos for graduation. The way the ceremony was conducted was very strange. A group of students would sit in a classroom until their room number would be called. At that point, we would meet with another classroom and merge with them. And then, these two lines merge with two other classrooms. So starting from a single-file line in a classroom, we end up on the front lawn marching 4 people at a time.
The ceremony started with the singing of the national anthem, of course. Then, 3 students gave their speeches. The speeches were decent, but nothing to write home about. The best part of the ceremony, in my opinion, was giving high school diplomas to two Los Gatos High School graduates from the 40s. They did not recieve their diplomas because they were sent to an internment camp shortly after Pearl Harbor. But now, they are able to claim their diplomas.
After some tear-jerker speeches, the names of the first seniors were being called. I was in the second to last row, so it would be an hour until my name is called. There were 450+ seniors graduating with me, so the whole thing took quite a while.
In the end, there were lots of hugs, handshakes, congratulations, and many many pictures.

A few hours later, Grad Night would start, but that's for the next post.

P.S. I don't have time to spell-check or edit this post, so if there are some mistakes, I'm sorry

My full speech

I view the world in a different way than you, for I am a free thinker, an atheist. For answers to unsolved mysteries, you turn to your God, while I use reason, logic, and science in search of answers to the unexplained. I am not bound by the rules established thousands of years ago. My future is shaped by the choices I make.

If you believe that the Bible is God's word, then you must also believe that God is very hypocritical and sadistic. You cannot claim that the Bible is inspirational and morally uplifting when there are dozens of examples of mass murder in the Bible which are condoned by God. Examples such as King David's massacre. "And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under the axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon." How some people who believe in an infallible Bible can accept this verse as God inspired, or morally uplifting can only give evidence to the blinding nature of belief. These verses should insult the intelligence of anyone who thinks that God possesses a loving nature. In the bible God condones murder, rape, slavery, and incest (you could find verses for all of these in here), yet for some reason women, blacks, and homosexuals are evil. The most obvious explanation for this is that the bible was written by white heterosexual men, who wrote this nonsense to preserve their dominance for centuries.

In regards to Jesus, around the world he is portrayed as a great humanitarian and a pacifist. Many politicians, primarily from the Republican party, who are almost all Christian, are running under the slogan of family values. Well, if they're Christian, they should know this verse. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." These words crush the idea of a pacifist Jesus and the modern concept of "family values."

If God does exist, I have some questions for Him
Why do you let your followers kill and rape?
If you are all powerful, please stop people from killing each other.
Why do your followers wage war in your name?
Why do you let your own Catholic priests molest children?
Why did you let 9/11 happen?
Why didn't you prevent the genocide in Darfur?
Why did you look on and do nothing when 11 million people were killed in the Holocaust? Actually, since God claims to be all powerful, that means God created the Holocaust himself. I don’t understand how people can be so foolish. Millions of people died after spending the remainder of their lives in gruesome conditions, meanwhile still believing in God, still praying to God, still hoping He will help the chosen people like He did in Egypt. To me, this Star of David is not a religious symbol, it’s a representation of my culture, my traditions, and my support of the Zionist movement. I do consider myself Jewish, but not in the religious sense of the world.

This brings me to my conclusion about religion. From my point of view, there are two possible classifications of religious people. There are those who did not read the bible completely, but still believe in God because they're gullible and follow the example of those around them. And then there are fundamentalists like Pat Robertson that read the bible from cover to cover and wholeheartedly believe every single word of it. They embrace the hateful messages the bible sends and use this book to bolster their agenda. Coincidently, every atheist I know is without exception a very ethical and peaceful person.

I am an atheist and this is my manifesto.

I believe...

Our final project in English class consists of a 4-5 minute speech about what we believe. I absolutely hate assignments like this. There are just some things that I can't share with anyone, yet Mr. Wong expects us to 'tell it all' in front of a class of people whom I barely know.

Well, since I probably won't see these people ever again, I'll say what I always wanted to say on the issue of religion. Here's the beginning of the speech:

I view the world in a different way than you, for I am a free thinker, an atheist. For answers to unsolved mysteries, you turn to your God, while I use reason, logic, and science in search of answers to the unexplained. I am not bound by the rules established thousands of years ago. My future is shaped by the choices I make...

And I will end it with I am an atheist and this is my manifesto.

I plan to bring in a bible as a prop and read one or two passages from the bible. I especially like these two about women:

Corinthians, 14:34-35: "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church."

Genesis 19:30-38: "And Lot went up out of Zoar..., and his two daughters with him; ...and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters. And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. And the first born bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Benammi: the same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day."

Thanks to ethicalatheist.com for finding these.

Police raid ThePirateBay

So I'm sitting in my chair, watching a movie, when a friend IMs with some horrific news - PirateBay has servers seized by Swedish police. Yes, I could not believe it. My favorite bittorrent website was shut down. Here's the message from their site:

In the morning of 2006-05-31 the Swedish National Criminal Police showed a search warrant to Rix|Port80 personnell. The warrant was valid for all datacentres of Rix|Port80 and was directed at The Pirate Bay. The allegation was breach of copy-right law, alternatively assisting breach of copy-right law.

The police officers were allowed access to the racks where the TPB servers and other servers are hosted. All servers in the racks were clearly marked as to which sites run on each. The police took down all servers in the racks, including the non-commercial site Piratbyrån, the mission of which is to defend the rights of TPB via public debate.

According to police officers simultaneously questioning the president of Rix|Port80, the purpose of the search warrant is to take down TPB in order to secure evidence of the allegations mentioned above.

The necessity for securing technical evidence for the existance of a web-service which is fully official, the legality of which has been under public debate for years and whose principals are public persons giving regular press interviews, could not be explained. Asked for other reasoning behind the choice to take down a site, without knowing wether it is illegal or not, the officers explained that this is normal.

The TPB can receive compensation from the Swedish state in case that the upcoming legal processes show that TPB is indeed legal.

After reading some news sites and forums, I realized that admins of TPB were not charged with anything and many are questioning the legality of the raid. ""The police right now is taking all of our servers, to check if there is a crime there or not (they are actually not sure)," ThePirateBay.org spokesperson “brokep” told Slyck.com."

They're not sure??? What the hell kind of laws do they have in Sweden?

Obviously this raid was called because of American pressure, especially from the MPAA. According to Swedish law, it is NOT ILLEGAL to have .torrent files on the servers and TPB admins will be in trouble only if the police find copyrighted material on the servers.

Busy, busy day (Part 2)

Ok, so yesterday there was a peace protest/fundraiser to stop the genocide in Sudan. This was happening on the front lawn of our school. At least two dozen students were fasting for 24 hours to simulate life in refugee camps. I stopped by at around 1 am while most were sleeping and did a very stupid thing. Maybe it's mob mentality, maybe I'm just retarded, but for some stupid reason we drove past them while playing rap music at ear-bleeding levels. If anyone from the protest is reading this, I cannot apologize enough for this. You were doing something decent, and I just couldn't find something better to do on a Saturday night. I have to say that I wholeheartedly support your cause and I hope you collected a lot of money to help the people of Sudan.

Remember the holocaust, Rwanda, Combodia. NEVER AGAIN!
http://www.savedarfur.org/

Busy, busy day (Part 1)

Yey, I actually did something this Saturday. If there are spelling or grammar errors in this post, I apologize, I'm writing this at 2 am after a very long day.

I woke up around 9:30 today (Saturday) and prepared for the tennis match against Mountain View High School. I got my uniform, shoes, extra shirt and socks, and some water. There was an important object missing, a tennis racket. The thing is, I lost my expensive racket and now have to borrow someone's every match we play. It's not that bad since we only have 2 matches left.
Freddy and I won our match fairly quickly, making some mistakes, but overall playing pretty good tennis. My parents and Ben showed up to watch me play and for some reason they walked in between the courts and the Mountain View guys yelled at them. I'm happy that they stopped by to support me, but I wish they wouldn't take pictures and/or videotape me.
After the match I called up Mike J and Mike P to play some street hockey. That was actually pretty fun and took up about 2 and a half hours. Alexei found us and after a short stay at the Vasona Park, we decided to get some more people and go ice skating. We called a lot of people but could only get Rachel and Lars to come with us. It was Alexei's first time ice skating, that's pretty sad for someone born and raised in Siberia. During the time there we hired two little kids to go around hitting Mike J. They did their job well.

I will summarize the rest of the day tomorrow, including the peace protest/fundraiser.

Sharks strike back

I won't take back what I said about the Sharks' defense in the previous post but I have to say that it's defenitely improved today. San Jose beat Nashville 3:0 in the second game of the playoffs to tie the series before two games in the Shark Tank. Vesa Toskala got a shut-out and Cheechoo, Smith, and Marleau scored a goal. Next game will be on Tuesday, which means I better get my homework done on Monday.

And the first game goes to....Nashville :(

I changed my mind about going to Dave & Busters. It's usually 21+ and if we did get in, food and drinks would be incredibly expensive. Instead we just went to Double D's in Los Gatos to watch the Sharks game. The atmosphere was amazing, people jumping up and screaming when the Sharks score and slamming the tables when Nashville scores. San Jose ended up losing 3 to 4, thanks to our nonexistant defense and mediocre goaltendeing.
Second game is tomorrow (Sunday) at 10am and hopefully we'll be able to snatch the away game.